The Fool Who Drooled
by Hairpull
Summary: There was Sasuke's uncle in the backyard, adjusting himself. MadaSaku/SasuNaru/AU.


01.

So it goes, as it so often does in an adolescent's brief and upsetting stage of life: puberty is rough, the once fine-china cheeks of your crushes are rougher, and maybe most disappointing of all, maintaining a quality troupe of friends is roughest.

For Sakura, being shuttled in freshman year to one crumb-studded lunchtable to the next felt, almost, like a muck-and-mire déjà vu, one which really had no end and started to lose its beginning (August? September? when they'd entered the lunch line?). Following Ino around like a puppy was, undoubtedly, convenient: the people (as faceless, innocuous and flavorless as they may have seemed) clung onto her like barnacles on a yacht, an easy partner in biology for when the pimpled sirs wanted to giggle and dip with their freckled madams, endless reserves of change and small bills when the lunch money had missed her pocket that morning by only an inch, and startlingly enough, Ino's many male friends, who, if Ino was away, wanted to play.

It was comfortable, it was nice.

But Ino wasn't as.

On the delicate and deadened skeletons of friends, boyfriends and lovers past, Ino carefully deluded new polyps to wobble in and nest in her crusty calciums reserves. She had a beautiful reef started.

Any bad little mariners who didn't want to die were smothered anyway, and left waiting by their telephones for a call, a hullo in the hallway, an invitation to a now-elusive birthday party (one that had been so vacuous and easy access in junior high).

Sakura's social sphere deflated to an alarming degree, to that where she sat with Ino's childhood friends Chouji and Shikamaru, who ate peanutbutter sandwiches and discussed the weather like old men. And once, when Shikamaru burst into weeping joy (a nose scratch accompanied by a half yawn) over a cloud formation shaped as a potato chip ("Chouji, look. Isn't that just fascinating?"), Sakura questioned her dilligence, her intelligence, and the remnants of her brain cells.

Was this what she wanted? Sitting with two goaty fellows for the remainder of her high school career? Would the chess club fulfill her adolescent urge to flirt and be merry? They answered back with a very dry, very bored no.

Sakura packed her bags, blew Chouji and Shikamaru kisses goodbye, and voyaged the other side of the cafeteria where wilderness occurred: lunchladies danced on tables for spare change to tuck in their aprons and social outcasts bowed dark heads in suppressed dignity while unrolling the tops of their paper bags.

_Fantastisque!_ to quote some enthusiastic French teacher.

One such social outcast had been one by choice; a guy who really was too pretty for words and was rumored to keep a tube of lipgloss in his backpack. What a hideous backpack it was, too: dark and tight, the bulges of pencils and erasers visible, mysterious dandrufflike flakes pooled in the upper seam, unless the explanation was a parmesan wrap, a waterbottle cradled in a tangle of bungee straps with a labeling of, in wispy black magic marker—_Sasuke Uchiha_. A guy who definitely wouldn't keep lipgloss in his backpack.

Sakura more thought lipstick, the bright red kind office ladies wore and got on their teeth so frequently, because that boy chewed and chewed hard on those lips. He had the snarl of a menacing cat as he let quicksilver dashes onto a piece of notebook paper; his math homework, she suspected, because he looked so into it. He had his messy hair pinned back with a thumb. He brooded over a tangent as she set her stuff down and pretended to count her presence as an absence.

_Not a very sly fucker, is he_? she thought, thinking back to the days of junior high when the very same Sasuke had been her very first twu-luv crush. Sakura, unlike many other girls, had had the bold notion to confront him; "I like you!" yelled to her victim and a gaggle of sixth grade girls. There were giggles, but no response. And rather than being persistent, and clinging onto that dreadful hope youngsters are so often bloated with, she got in touch with her embarassment; cursed "that rat-bastard to hell" for it. In high school, it almost felt karmic to seat herself and chew her good cud-salad lazily, to watch him fluster and hiss like she had done nearly three years before.

Sasuke went on a tiny and domestic rampage: he swatted his textbook open to several nonspecific pages, as if checking for the solutions (like any normal, levelheaded person did when an incredible night of solo Wii took priority over math; mostly Sakura's case, but the suggestion still held water), channeled his inner John Nash by digging around in his backpack until it took another shapeless, mysterious form, took the retracted pen and drew dividers around his problems and probably ran out of things to do, because he embarked on a glare that obviously wasn't quite perfected: he pushed his eyebrows down lower, leavened some tension on his mouth and crinkled his nose until he felt four wrinkles on each wing.

Sakura began making that horrible sound that happens when the straw has no more soda to suck up.

Sasuke whined and threw his hands over his head and his shoulders shook, as if by sob. Sakura couldn't hear anything over her straw's guttural mating call, but did look on in abject fascination as Sasuke puddled into a twinging mass of neurosis. He lifted his head to reveal red marks on his fetching fine-china face.

He was flushed and cute; too totally adorable to make suffer. So the straw ceased and she offered a hand to the burbling, gurgling stick of heaven caught in his own confusion.

He accepted, in unnecessary hauteur, her terms of friendship; he started on a wearied tirade of the cafeteria, its swamp of ABC gum always on his heels and its lunchladies in hot pursuit of sexual harassment charges (his peppermint cheeks, how sweet he looked as he spat and hissed about the old crones), its crusty condiment dispensers and frequent visitors, who dissuaded him from getting a splotch of mayonnaise on his bologna-and-rye. The criminals ought to be locked up tight in chains, the scoundrels.

By the rant stepping to the bounds of auditorium, Sakura thought perhaps she had become a vessel rather than a friend, but then when had Shikamaru and Chouji planted any seed of misgiving within her? Their hi's and byes were hardly accountable for bosom-ness and anything they ever said to her was lukewarm in its emotional intensity. Why, she'd even learned from a third source Chouji was in love with a girl in his home economics class, who baked cookies first-rate. And this Sasuke, in the blushing entertainment he provided, was quite serious. Once he finished with his second period, he seemed worn-out (but had plently of other things to nag on, no doubt, once he regained his steam) and glared at her dubiously, like it was her turn.

She made an uncertain start on the gym teacher's sweat spells and frolicked through a field of bum teachers like dandelions, popping their heads off glibly: Mr. Hatake's feet belonged within his pennyloafers, not scouring the carpet demurely; Ms. Yuuhi really shouldn't wear such bright lipstick, should opt for a nude color so Mr. Sarutobi didn't drone through a history lesson appearing as a half-dressed drag queen; and should Mr. Umino get such a bum rap for his goofy ties? Sasuke thought not to the last—_he_ would wear them too, if he were forced to thrive in this vacuum of a drab environment for the rest of his life.

(Privately Sakura wondered if this funny or not, but made no further comment.)

Thusly, they formed a steady little rapport: not a week later he waited for Sakura at her locker, mostly enchanted by the way she neither pinched nor plucked at him.

They shared trivialites ("My mother made crème brûlée last night," and he'd thrust out a spoonful for her mouth, quirked in awe and an aw), acted dependently sometimes ("Do realize what an adverbial overdose is," she'd say drily, casually, happily, snarkily, nastily as he tucked his English paper away in shame and she recapped her red pen), embarked on several missions together ("Operation one," she told him lightly, "if we don't appear at the school board meeting tonight, they'll suck all the budget for your toilet seat covers." His abject misery and echoing moan, "I won't let them!") and even rowed in sun-dappled school trips,

("I don't like your attitude, like you think I'm allergic to daylight," he remarked in a gush while they were in line for candy apples at the fall festival.

She shrugged, "Well, I'd like to eat at the picnic table over there. How about that?"

Sasuke scowled at the warm-spotted wooden slats, the direct end of a beam of sunlight peeking through some heavenly clouds. It wouldn't kill him to turn brown).

Teachers dubbed them "a gruesome twosome" and "best buds," even something as vulgar as "a handsome young couple" by their ill-received Mr. Umino.

Somehow, though, they were unsuccessful in swerving romance.

As a farce, the two attended a football game–a robust jovial affair where Sasuke admired the cheerleaders in their uniforms (Sakura's surprise went south when he commented on how well the stitching was done, how well they matched the fall season) and both guffawed at the midget-boys stuffed into parachute-fitting suits with too-big numbers ("Number 88, So-and-So, weighing in at a whopping one hundred and fifteen pounds, the starting quarterback!" whooped the announcer and the two died), mammoth helmets encircling their busted brains.

One such boy, a bumbling halfback, went benched the whole night through. Naruto Uzumaki shouted up in the stands to his fans (his parents), so everyone would rest assured he'd get to play _sometime_.

He shed his famished squint when Sasuke tore off a bit of elephant ear and chucked it at the yipper—"Fuck you, whoever did that! I'll find you by tomorrow and show you what it means to be a Konoha High athlete! That's right, I'll use my popularity and contacts to take you down! You don't know who I know!"

If Sasuke remembered right, chewing drolly, N. Uzumaki sat with Misters S. Aburame and K. Inuzuka at lunch, with the socially impaired H. Hyuuga, cousin of _the_ esteemed and hated N. Hyuuga. So he did have connections. What a blast.

Apathetically Sakura watched on as Sasuke delivered yet another piece of elephant ear to the helmet of Naruto. She'd rather have eaten in (it had been $4.99 plus tax), but it was Sasuke's money and she wasn't one to interfere. Or she was, but felt this was neither the appropriate time nor place.

Sasuke had cinnamon sugar on his fingers (he "hated" sweets, but ate them by the truckload supposedly to keep his blood sugar in check) he was going wipe on his jeans, Sakura suspected.

Instead he took on a frightening appearance of joy, high off the elephant ear's wrath, and replaced that familiar frown with a look rapt of the coarse sensuality that suited him too well.

He thrust out a finger—like that spoon, that awful spoon jiggling with crème brûlée—and dipped it in her dry mouth.

For an awkward moment they experimented — he sat his fingertip on her tastebuds and she gave a curious roll. He wiped her drool on his jeans and, earnestly, said a line that rattled her institutions of sanity, "Parting is such sweet sorrow."

She patted (shook) his shoulder and rejoined less amiably, "Let's forget this ever happened."

He agreed, but only if she'd give him a spritz of hand sanitizer. The saliva was still there, in phantom presence.

**0**

To Sasuke's apparent delight and Sakura's humble horror, a close friend of N. Uzumaki had been seated directly in their proximity at the football game, had even tried to dump his drink in Sasuke's hair but failed at the screeching of his mother—a T. Inuzuka whom Sasuke respected and admired now.

Apparently she was one of those swell ladies colored exotic in tattoos, mounted a motorcycle to vibrate between her thighs, and drank barrels of expensive vodka paid for by unlucky-in-love barflies whose projected doubts were insightful but sadly neglected.

Her son, K. Inuzuka, suffered chronic cavities—he oiled his fillings—and snacked on beef sticks throughout all classes.

That night in the bleachers his mother, gleefully attacking a thermos full of Jack Daniels, caught her baby-son in the wretched act and hit him upon the head with her sloshing thermos. Jack Daniels disposed of the un-guilty by wrapping him up in a Konoha Leaves blanket with a safety pin that had dangled in her cleavage.

He could scarcely move his arms, but the next day informed Sasuke, during lunch very loudly, he had been waving to him, just not with all five fingers.

Sakura sensed the stirrings of Sasuke's mad laugh; the one he reserved for such events as these. When he _wanted_ to be faux-sociable and lively.

This had occurred once before: the tennis courts, in mid-March, the two had bleachered themselves very much at the top for a photo-shoot in yearbook class (one inaccessible usually to freshman, but their babyfaced pouts sent the teacher into a motherly mad dash to get her camera and put them on the first page together, if not the cover).

Their assignment was the girls' tennis team and their gloomy coach, Mr. Sarutobi, who puffed his cigarette idly by the sidelines and told the girls their forms were off, average, good enough, whatever. "I just want to go home," Sasuke caught him forming the last word in the camera's screen, on flash. Mr. Sarutobi thanked god, after that, it wasn't a video camera.

One of the more vigorous players, Tenten, beckoned them lower. Her form and spatial reasoning smacked of professional lessons, Sasuke muttered to Sakura. She wanted them to capture this, and feature her in her odd pleated skirt and visored loveliness to all the world in the yearbook. No one else should be. "Varsity players like me," she proclaimed, "should be napping in trophies and thumbing through sports scholarships!" She bent down on one knee, clasping both hand over the end of her racket. She posed nicely. Sasuke pretended to snap good pictures, told her how lovely her muscled calves were, did the mad laugh and extended a hand—she was charmed and shook it with as much vigor as she did a racket.

He scuttled with Sakura to a safe haven, and with disgusting aptitude showed her the snapshots of Tenten's various limbs, her chest, a one featuring an unsightly brown spot on her shoulder.

There was not a whole photo in the bunch.

"We'll–I'll make a whole page of it! A poster! She'll be featured on my wall. Won't it be splendid?" He cackled into a coarse cough, and unfettered his fingers from their fist to nab Sakura lightly on the shoulder. "Say, do you want some too?"


End file.
